Litepanels Gemini Case Study

Ciroc Bottle Shoot – 4 LED Panels Lighting Setup

Director of Photography: Andrew Kung

Camera Operator/Video Editor: Nathan Smith

Stills Photography and BTS: Rachel Lutz and Zach Browning

Stills Retouching: Zach Browning

Location: Andrew Kung Group Studio

As a Director of Photography and head of a production company that shoots a wide variety of commercial/advertising media for lifestyle brands, hospitality companies, editorials and retail brands, we often find ourselves in search of the best camera and lighting equipment to get the job done efficiently. Often times, this results in us demo-ing and purchasing equipment that we put through a rigorous amount of daily use. In regards to lighting equipment, we often find that the most expensive lights are not always the most appropriate for our usage, for one reason or another.

One of the best photography and videography lights we’ve come across is a product that fulfills a majority of our needs at a cost that is highly attractive – the Litepanels Gemini, which is a full spectrum daylight to tungsten LED soft panel light that is highly affordable. Currently, it comes in a 2×1 LED panel and for us, apart from being able to dial in any color in the 360 color wheel, this light is also consistent and flicker free at any intensity, frame rate and shutter angle. For us and particularly for this shoot, it was highly beneficial to know that all our slow-motion shots were flicker-free and there was no shift in color at all power levels, giving us the lighting consistency that is needed for all e-commerce and product photography.

– Andrew Kung, President of Andrew Kung Group

For our setup shooting the Ciroc Black Raspberry product, we used 4 of these Litepanels Gemini LED 2×1 panels that could plug directly into a regular electrical socket in our studio. Ease of use is an understatement (also lightweight compared to some other brands). Since these lights are inherently soft but yet had ample intensity, we could use these to shoot directly onto the product without any diffusion, shoot into V-Flats to produce diffused lighting or to bounce light onto the edges of the bottle to create a white edge/line. What this means is that we now had the ability and forego using multiple lighting instruments and diffusers/softboxes such as stripboxes and scrims to achieve the same effect, essentially meaning that you could cut down your lighting kit in your studio or grip truck to a smaller and more manageable size. For lighting equipment, this entire product shoot was shot using only 4 LED light panels. Our setup for each motion shot can be seen here.

For most of the shoot, we used a reflective black surface which provided a nice glossy reflection of the bottle and a Savage 9′ Super Black seamless backdrop as the background. For the video component, a vast majority of the shots were shot in slow-motion at anywhere from 60fps to 120fps. Since this involved bottle photography and video, we had to be concerned with reflections on the glass. To minimize the reflections, we used two large 48″x48″ Matthews floppy cutters on the left and right of the camera to block out any unwanted reflections. We also set up a number of other black foam core boards on set to tackle this issue as well as you will see in the behind-the-scenes images.

Above are examples from our stills photography shoot with these bottles. When shooting bottles on dark surfaces, especially dark/black bottles, it is typically best to create a white edge or white line on either side to frame the bottle so that it does not disappear into the background. As you can see, the inherent reflections have been left on the bottles to show the positioning of the lights and these bottle shots are not composited from multiple images with different lighting setups. These reflections are usually refined even further in post before delivery to the client but we wanted to show you what you would be able to achieve in-camera with only some basic post-production. What you see here is what the camera captured with our LED panel lighting setup, with some dust removal/cleanup and minor enhancements applied to curves and sharpening.

To read more about our lighting setup and the equipment that we used, feel free to scroll down to read more.

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Even though this is a simple shot, it is appealing to me because of the ability to create such shots in-camera instead of in-post. The Litepanels Gemini LED panel has a very pleasant, soft fade-in upon startup and we used this property to illuminate the front label. The shot starts with the Gemini on the left staying on and bouncing light into a V-Flat to illuminate the left side of the bottle while the Gemini on the top boom is off at the start and is then turned on during the shot. This illuminates the details on the front of the bottle gradually; which results in properties of a shot like this being created in-camera instead of in-post.

For this shot, we used a Gemini as our key with a grid to light the black raspberries from the right rear, at about 45 degrees. The height of the key was on the same level as the subject. The grid helped us control spill and focus the light towards the top right of the frame. We then used another Gemini positioned slightly above the raspberries at about 25% intensity of the key in order to add some fill light. Lighting this shot with this setup allowed us to maintain a lot of dimensionality on the raspberries as well as to add some nice highlights on the water without creating a flat shot.

Similar to the first illuminating shot from dark to light, this bottle shot setup is a slight variant where we had 2 Gemini’s on the left and right, set on low power and aimed into V-Flats. The shot starts out with the bottle slightly illuminated from both sides with the bounce from the V-Flats and then another Gemini aimed top-down on a junior boom arm is used to light the details. To make this static shot more interesting, the top-down light is ‘rotated in’ using the junior boom arm to move over and light the product, resulting in some nice highlights and reflections that move over the embossed details of the bottle.

For this shot, we wanted to introduce some color. Purple is the color associated with the Ciroc Black Raspberry branding and so we used the Litepanels Gemini’s full RGB spectrum capabilities to output color that would normally require gels. We used one Gemini, camera left on the far side, to light the pour and then another Gemini was used to light the bottle from the top.

Another shot made simple with these LED panels. The two Gemini LED panels and V-Flats were used as edge lights while another Gemini used as the key was placed camera right to highlight the Ciroc logo. The edge lights were dialed down to be about 3 stops lower than the key.

Almost to the final shot with a full introduction of color on the background this time. We used a Gemini as the background light to output a purple wash onto the seamless while the 2 LED panels on the left and right remain bouncing light off the V-flats. Then we used one more Gemini right above the camera for some front fill – far enough away from the martini glass to not add additional reflections.

For the Martini shot (no pun intended), we used the setup from before but without the purple background wash. We also rotated and moved the top-down Gemini LED panel from above the camera to behind the bottle and martini glass to add some top-down light as our key.

AUTHOR:

ANDREW KUNG

FOUNDER, INSTRUCTOR, NINJA

Andrew has over 15 years of experience in the field and has served on set as the Director of Photography and Principal Stills Photographer for various commercial and advertising campaigns for companies such as Valvoline, Tempur-Pedic, Humana, Churchill Downs and General Electric Appliances.

When he’s not craving sushi (or talking about it), Andrew is an instructor, ninja, and founder of Visionspire. He loves traveling out West, particularly in Sedona and San Diego, sharing cute animal videos, and experimenting with cocktails like he’s the personal mixologist for Bill Murray (his words, not ours).